Three good things. Every day.

kids

Post navigation

Yesterday was extremely busy for me, so I didn’t have a chance to post. But (briefly), here are three good things from yesterday:

1. Having lunch with one of my best friends from college and getting a chance to catch up. (She’s also in a similar place in life, so it was really great to share and commiserate and give/receive advice).

2. As I drove to meet her, I went slightly out of range of my favorite radio station and had to listen to commercial radio for a little bit, which always makes me a little sad. I think I listened to more radio commercials yesterday than I had so far this year. But I did hear Same Love by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis not once, but twice. And even though it is a little preachy in its message, it still makes me happy to hear it being played on a commercial radio station. The music video is also beautiful.

3. Dinner with a set of J’s friends from college, including an adorable dog and – best of all – an 18-month-old toddler. He was adorable, and showed all of the traits I love about toddlers. He happens to be in a phase where he’s fascinated by how doors work, so he spent minutes at a time (which is hours in toddler time) opening and closing doors repeatedly. But the absolute cutest thing was when he would throw a tennis ball for the dog, and the dog would spaz out because she was so excited about the ball, and the toddler would be thrilled and giggle and shriek with joy.

Tonight, we went to an engagement party for J’s high school girlfriend (which gave me an awesome response to “How do you know X?” – “I’m her ex-boyfriend’s wife.”) I really love weddings and wedding-like celebrations – it’s so fun to watch people who are in love and are about to make/just made a huge commitment to each other. I love the happiness, the caring, the gazing into each others’ eyes, the stolen kisses and other cute public displays of affection. And now that I’m married myself, it also brings me back to my own wedding and lets me relive it a little bit.

This celebration was particularly fun because a close friend of J’s was there with her toddler, who we haven’t seen in almost a year. It’s always amazing to me how fast kids grow and change. Last time we saw her, she was just learning to speak in single words, while tonight she was extremely articulate and asking her mother to let her go play with “the baby” – who was only a little over a year younger, but was in a drastically different place developmentally.

On Monday, J and I tagged along to a Memorial Day Barbecue being thrown by a friend of a friend, and found ourselves adrift in a sea of toddlers. Which was fantastic – I can’t imagine a better way to spend the day.

Toddlers may actually be my favorite age. They’re so curious about everything, and so easily excited and interested and fascinated by things, because everything is so new to them. Plus – bonus – they’re still small enough that you can easily pick them up and set them down someplace else when you need to. I know they also throw some pretty intense tantrums when they’re not happy, but watching them learn how to engage with the world around them more than makes up for those low points, in my opinion. Of course, I don’t have kids of my own yet, so my opinion may change when I’m spending more than a few hours at a time with a toddler. But I don’t think it will.

One of the fun things about the barbecue was that J and I had the chance to see a whole bunch of different parenting styles in action. There was one couple who scolded their child every time she picked anything up that she might even be considering putting in her mouth, and ran to catch her any time she neared a muddy area. On the other end of the spectrum, our hosts let their twin boys explore everything, and they spent most of the barbecue playing in the bucket of water and ice that held the drinks. By the end of the afternoon, they were soaked, muddy, and had put almost every can or bottle into their mouths at one point.

The high point of the afternoon (at least as far as the toddlers were concerned) seemed to be when J was conned into giving out wagon rides in one of these. What he didn’t know when he started was that the kids would never tire of being pulled around in it, no matter how many times they circled the very small front yard. Luckily, when he was ready to be done, an older sister stepped up to be the wagon driver. Sucker.